Why & How To Do Multichannel Marketing?

Multichannel Marketing : Today, companies have at their disposal a huge array of channels to sell their product. There aren’t many companies working “the old-fashioned way” on a single channel anymore. With the rise of digital, the multitude of channels has become even more accentuated and allows marketers to explore many increasingly innovative sales methods. 

Find out why you should adopt a multi-channel marketing strategy in your business, on which channels you can establish yourself, as well as the limits of this method and its differences with cross-channel and omnichannel.

What Is Multi-Channel Marketing?

Multichannel marketing is simply the act of setting up different tools and channels to talk to customers and prospects. Of course, we think in the first place of digital tools which are very numerous, but this also includes all offline communications.

Your potential customers are probably present on several communication channels, and this strategy allows you to reach as many as possible. Why restrict yourself to a single channel when you can pick up customers everywhere? That’s kind of the question that this sales strategy answers.

Why Use A Multi-Channel Strategy? The 4 Advantages

The principle of the multichannel marketing strategy is not very complicated to understand. Now let’s see what are the advantages that this strategy will give you.

More market coverage

First of all, as has been said, there is very little chance that all of your potential customers will only be on one channel, unless your market is extremely small. So, logically, if you extend your influence to multiple channels, you will cover your market better and take up more space in it. This is a first advantage that will allow you to grow your turnover.

More sales

Then, obviously, you’ll make more sales if you communicate on more different channels. Finally, we will see it later, it is not that simple, there are other things to take into account.

It is the consumers who dictate how the market evolves, and it is their needs and habits that will dictate your marketing actions. If we stick to this principle, multichannel marketing is a no-brainer. We adapt to the habits of customers by looking for them on the platforms they use. There’s no point in posting on a single channel while waiting for them to come. They are the ones to follow, not the other way around.

If you adapt to your prospects’ channels, you’ll reach more, and your revenue will be more likely to increase. In addition, the channels do not all have the same cost, and to rank on only one of them is not profitable.

More loyalty

Another potential benefit of using multichannel marketing is that you’ll make loyalty processes easier. In fact, if we look at the methods of Inbound Marketing and in particular the famous sales funnel, we see that it is difficult to manage all this with a single channel. If you meet the needs of your users on all platforms, you will be able to take your customer throughout the sales funnel: website, social networks, emailing, etc .

It makes even more sense when it comes to loyalty. If you open up to other communication channels, you are bound to open up to other ways of communicating with your customer. This can help establish a different closeness than the way you address someone who doesn’t know you.

For example, you can acquire a customer by making yourself known through your presence in the search results on a query that corresponds to a need of your user. Then, once he is convinced of your expertise through your blog, he consults customer reviews, your sales page and then moves on to the purchase (in a perfect world). At that time, it is very likely that you will retrieve his contact information, the opportunity for you to retain him through personalized emails. 

We will see later that each channel has particularities and allows you to communicate in one way or another with your prospect / customer.

Better relationship with the competition

Thanks to a multi-channel approach, your relationship with the competition will also evolve. Today, whether online or physical, the competition in terms of marketing is very strong. Just because you don’t operate a channel doesn’t mean your competitors don’t. There’s a good chance that your competitors are present on other channels. The most telling example is the presence on social networks. 

Of course, you have no interest in going on TikTok if you sell hearing aids, but you have to study all the options available to your brand.

In any case, if you work in niche or emerging markets, it is quite possible to exploit channels where your competitors are not yet. In this situation, you can more easily take the monopoly of the channel with regard to your market and therefore be recognized as an expert.

What Are The Differences Between Multichannel, Cross-Channel And Omnichannel?

Between multichannel, cross-channel and omnichannel, it’s easy to get lost. At first glance, all these notions mean the same thing, but beware, this is not the case! These are actually 3 principles that are totally different but complementary in the end (we do not make things easier).

First of all, what is multichannel? This is the response of marketing to the multiplication of communication channels. We have always managed to find and develop new ways of communicating for brands. Today with social networks, websites and everything we saw previously in the article, there are many possible channels.

Multichannel marketing is simply the fact of being present on several communication channels.

Then we have the cross-channel. This is the step that comes after multichannel. The cross-channel strategy is the method according to which we will integrate the different communication channels between them. As we saw in the article, if you use several channels, you have to find a way to nest them between them, without cannibalizing yourself of course. Typically, using a sales funnel with multiple channels in it is cross-channel.

The cross-channel strategy is the way in which we will create a link between the communication channels.

Finally, as far as omnichannel is concerned, we are more on the deepening of what we have just seen. In an omnichannel strategy, we implement processes that optimize the relationship between the channels as well as possible.

In other words, all these concepts are rather complementary, even if they are basically similar. In fact, if you implement an omnichannel strategy, you automatically do cross-channel and multichannel. That’s why it’s easy to get lost between all these very close notions in terms of meaning and spelling.

You have now understood how essential it is to adopt multichannel marketing today, provided you manage it well. Do not hesitate to give us your feedback on multichannel marketing in the comments or on our social networks.